


Team Drinking Night

by scrawly_times



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Heavy Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21980002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrawly_times/pseuds/scrawly_times
Summary: In the tf2 comics it's shown that Sniper's "family moonshine" can knock Demo out fucking cold. This is what happens when you stop and overthink that implication that even mild Australian alcohol can knock out "more alcohol than blood" Tavish DeGroot!Aka Sniper gets challenged to a drinking contest and he, like this story, gets a little carried away.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 74





	Team Drinking Night

**Author's Note:**

> YEAH SO I FOUND THIS FIC BURIED IN MY DOCUMENTS from my last tf2 binge ages ago and I laughed my ass off finding it. I spent an hour or so editing it and figured this is too golden not to share. 
> 
> There's maybe a bit of oocness here bcz alcohol but I fiddled with it here and there so it was less Jarring than the initial draft 
> 
> Some ships are implied but overall I tried to keep it gen-ish. The whole team is here, don't worry!

In retrospect it was probably not the best idea to get involved in a drinking contest with the rest of RED.

Sniper couldn't really say what prompted him to do just that, though it was probably something along the lines of it having been a long time since he'd had any proper alcohol since leaving Australia. 

Something to do with Australians having stronger alcohol tolerance and being able to drink proofs that could give others alcohol poisoning within minutes… Sniper had never really given it much thought. He didn't have the ability to chug 200 proof like it was water like most Australians, but he still grew up sipping the family moonshine from a rather young age. 

When he'd first met the Demoman Sniper hadn't been overly impressed. Until he realized the sheer quantity and general potency of what the Scotsman drank on a constant basis. He could definitely manage to take on the average Australian in a drinking contest. Sniper honestly wanted to see that happen someday, though it was unlikely. 

But Sniper wasn't one for drinking for drunkness sake. He liked having a good stiff drink at least once a day (it put hairs on your chest, in Australia usually literally) but that was usually the limit of his drinking. 

There was the small fact that Sniper didn’t exactly…  _ like  _ his drunk self, and there was the more important fact that he didn't much care for the alcohol found outside his home country. It was usually too weak or just plain tasted weird to his bastardized taste buds. 

Demo had a personal goal, it would seem, to find everyone on the team an alcohol they enjoyed to drink with him. When he'd finally managed to coax stories of Australia's usual drinks out of Sniper, the Scotsman spent a fair amount of time just bemoaning his inability to access the stuff. Then he'd accepted the challenge of getting Sniper interested in… basically anything else. 

Sniper was usually pretty bemused by the whole thing. Demo knew a frightening amount about alcohol of all stripes and got his hands on some of the  _ weirdest _ concoctions. Some of them Sniper tolerated more than most, but he still wasn’t much for them. He liked his alcohol capable of knocking a (non-Australian) man off his feet with one shot. 

This did lead to him and Demoman spending some time together outside of the field, at least. Sniper didn’t really mind sitting with the man and listening to him ramble while sipping on whatever Demo wanted him to try this time. 

Of course, since Sniper very obviously enjoyed the strongest forms of alcohol, Demo always bothered him for a drinking contest. Sniper turned him down every time because he  _ really, really _ didn’t like being drunk. As in there was more than just a hangover to dread afterwards. 

He was a terrible drunk. Outside of Australia it took  _ ages _ to get to that level of drunkness but once he did  _ nothing _ would be the same ever again. He had no plans of handing over that sort of blackmail to the rest of RED.

But of course, like all well laid plans with RED, that eventually fell apart. 

Again, Sniper wasn’t quite sure what finally made him agree to a drinking contest. It might have been influenced by how long it had been since he’d gotten properly smashed. It probably involved Demo’s insistent yet friendly and patient invites time after time. It absolutely involved Scout hearing him turn Demo down and baiting him. 

That little shit was going to learn soon enough why you never challenged an Aussie to a drinking contest. 

So when their first night off of the weekend finally rolled around and everyone gathered around the bonfire outside (drinking contests inside the base were banned after the Ceiling Incident) Sniper found himself a little nervous. He wasn’t a very social guy. He didn’t really get how to talk to people or mess around with them. And he just  _ knew  _ this night was going to end in disaster. 

Well, if he backed out now he’d never live it down. Sniper had made his bed so it was time to lay in it. 

When everyone was finally sat down to roasting hotdogs and marshmallows over the bonfire Demo started cracking out the alcohol. Sniper was one of the first to dig in to whichever bizarre, probably illegal brand Demo had procured for him this time. He wanted to get the night over with as soon as possible.

Medic drank freely but didn’t participate in their contest, muttering something about how difficult it was to transplant a new liver into yourself.

Scout was more interested in at least trying a little bit of  _ everything _ Demo had to offer out of sheer curiosity rather than intent to get smashed. Demo and Medic both tried warning him repeatedly about mixing drinks but Scout refused to listen. 

Spy was sipping wine in a distant corner and looked like he had no inclination of sharing any of it. (Demo always made sure to get the Good Stuff, whatever that meant to winers. Sniper didn’t care for the stuff at all.) 

Pyro of course had a straw stuck through some weird angle of their gas mask and was sipping on what could either be champagne, apple juice, or something just plain non drinkable. Since the Engineer didn’t seem concerned as he drank some simple beers next to them, Sniper figured there wasn’t a problem like the Pinesol incident. 

Out of the rest of the team, Engie was more participating in the contest to humor them. He was predictably the first to sway out, choosing to back out and sit down by Pyro and berate Scout for mixing alcohols. By that point his Texas accent was so strong and he was slurring rather badly. He sounded frighteningly like Pyro.

Heavy and Soldier were the next to fall out. Soldier insisted on matching everyone for every drink possible. He also had a taste for odd mixtures, apparently, which usually contained enough alcohol to down normal men. Soldier took an hour of nonstop drinking before he passed out where he stood. Nobody was really concerned since he had, frankly, an inhuman ability to push himself to the very limit without harm. He’d be fine by tomorrow.

Heavy followed soon after. While he didn’t black out he  _ was _ still very drunk off some unpronounceable Russian liquor and he was a very  _ cuddly  _ drunk. Sniper was somewhat afraid when the giant bowed out by hugging him and Demo with mumbled Russian and going to sit next to Medic cheerfully. The last Sniper really noticed of him was Medic and Pyro being used as teddy bears and Pyro gleefully trying to get Scout in on the impromptu cuddle pile.

And then it was two. The real competition started.

Sniper and Demo went at it with the determination only two absolutely smashed drunks can have. 

In the end, Demo won, to Sniper's mild surprise but amusement. Medic actually had to extract himself from Heavy’s hold and lecture the two in tipsy half-English half-German on the dangers of alcohol poisoning. Demo, while technically immune to such a thing, was still more roaring drunk than he usually got. Which truly said something. Sniper very rarely  _ got  _ drunk enough to cope with the alcohol very well. His tolerance was far beyond any normal person’s but even he had a limit. And Medic was willing to enforce that limit with Heavy’s muscles if he had to.

At least that was what they could understand between them from whatever the fuck he was saying. They were lucky he talked as much with his hands and face as his words.

Truthfully Demo was a graceful winner and Sniper didn’t much care for winning in the first place, so they both grinned and sloppily shook hands to congratulate each other.

And then, once Sniper was no longer occupied with chugging back as much poison as he could, things got interesting.

Being the least drunk, or maybe not even drunk at all, Spy and Pyro were primarily in charge of making sure nobody did anything very stupid. Spy’s first instinct was of course potential blackmail. He had a small portable camera ready to snap at an instant if anyone did something incriminating. 

So Pyro's goal was to keep them from doing anything too stupid and Spy's was to just make sure nobody died. 

Sniper was actually a rather emotional person behind his sunglasses and dislike of complex social interactions. His poker face rivaled Spy’s. He preferred to not express his emotions as freely as, say, Engineer or Scout. He was more comfortable that way and his team had, over time, learned to recognize his little tells of emotion instead. 

While drunk? That poker face was gone and he was very, very happy to express anything and everything he'd shoved behind a wall of social inadequacy. 

Spy was near  _ giddy  _ at the hilarity of this situation.  __

The first thing Sniper did after he and Demo ended their contest was turn to Medic.

“Yer great, ya know it? Yer always doin this stuff.” Sniper slurred out slowly and calmly in near incomprehensible English. “Makin sure we don’t keel over. Ya don’t even have to!” He chortled loudly, smiling lazily and leaning over to hang over Medic’s shoulder. 

Medic started in confusion and surprise. They were both drunk and it was easy to forget that Sniper was shorter only than Heavy on the team. Medic wasn’t used to being towered over. Much less used as a short cuddle post.

“Ja I do!” Medic retorted back as soon as he got over his surprise. For he was  _ also  _ an emotional drunk. “Dumpkoffs always getting yourselves hurt!” Spy briefly wondered how they could both understand each other, with two foreign drunk accents being mangled so brutally. Medic's English could be spotty on a  _ good  _ day. 

“Naw, ya  _ could _ just let us Respawn.” Sniper  _ poked  _ Medic’s cheek with a self-assured expression. “But instead you just… fix us up? How do ya even do that.” He leaned over Medic more and by now was actually hugging and using him as a prop to stay standing. “Bein all… nice. And creepy and shit. S’nice.”

Medic wasn’t really sure how to react to that, slowly turning a little red and bashful. 

“Who else vould do it..?” He muttered, trying to retreat back to Heavy. The Russian seemed to have noticed his favorite teddy bear was being used by someone else and was squinting suspiciously at them. 

Spy very gladly snapped a repertoire of pictures of the two, but in the process he seemed to catch their attention. Medic saw the small flash of the camera and turned beet red with a furious expression. Spy’s heart skipped a beat and he quickly stashed it, praying the mad doctor was too drunk to realize.

Medic’s attention on him got Sniper looking up too.

“Spook!” 

Never had Spy heard the nickname spoken so… cheerfully and  _ warmly.  _ He’d always assumed the Sniper called him it as a derogatory term, but hearing it said this way seemed to indicate otherwise.

“Yes, bushman?” 

Spy shouldn’t have acknowledged him. Sniper let go of Medic (who gladly stumbled back to Heavy and Pyro’s cuddle pile, muttering German curses and threats) and then walked surprisingly steadily over to him. 

Nobody saw it coming. Sniper was terrifyingly fast on the field when he wanted to be. Apparently even when drunk, he could channel that. One second Sniper was strolling over and the next his lanky arms were wrapped around Spy’s shoulders, his face buried in his expensive suit's shoulder. 

Scout and Engie both immediately burst into laughter, giggling together in a way that spoke of some inside joke, probably at Spy’s scandalized expression over Sniper’s shoulder. Heavy’s rolling chuckle followed pretty soon, as did Pyro’s muffled giggles.

There was a solid half minute of silence as Sniper hugged Spy and Spy tried to comprehend what the hell was happening.

“Bushman. I will ask you this  _ once _ before I stab you. What the  _ fuck _ do you think you are doing.” The giggling from the others turned into quickly muffled cackling as Spy turned his glare on them.

Sniper made a muffled “I don’t know” sound into his shoulder, the slight movement of a lazy shrug jostling him. 

“You do not know why you are…  _ hugging _ me.” Spy stated with deadpan disbelief.

Sniper made an agreeing noise and shrugged again.

Spy decided this had gone on long enough. He pulled out his balisong from his sleeve and squeezed it between him and the Australian as much as he could in the loose but strangely constricting hug. 

He didn’t try to stab him, just putting the knife  _ there _ and letting the point prick Sniper's chest ever so slightly as a warning. The hug loosened and Sniper drew back a bit, though he ended up having propped his arms over Spy’s shoulders with them face to face. 

This was a lot worse. 

He did not  _ actually _ want to stab the drunk idiot, Spy reminded himself firmly. Medic was in no condition to be taking care of serious injuries and Respawn wouldn’t pop Sniper out until the next battle in two days.

“Sniper. If you do not release me I am going to stab you non mortally but  _ very painfully. _ ”

Sniper just hummed and smiled drunkenly at him. 

“S’nice yer like this yanno. Spies are always so…” Sniper made a very ‘meh’ noise and nearly plopped his face back into Spy’s shoulder before the flat of the balisong on his forehead had him pulling back a bit more. “Even spies knowin' I won’t come back if they kill me woulda prob'ly killed me jus' now.”

“I am still debating killing you.” Spy hissed dangerously.

“But yer  _ debatin _ it.” Sniper grinned. “Yer a nice guy underneath all yer…” Sniper’s grip loosened even more to wave a hand loosely at Spy's entire self. Spy took the opportunity to get an extra inch or two between them. It was like trying to squeeze out of a constrictor’s coils. 

“Shittiness?” Scout called out across the fading bonfire, very obviously enjoying this interaction.

“Spookness.” Sniper slurred confidently like a solid fact. “Yer a nice guy. Kinda think ya need a hug now and then. Y’don’t act like you get em a lot.”

Spy finally got enough room and leverage to shove Sniper away from him. He saw the opportunity to distract Sniper and spun him around towards Scout.

“I get lots of hugs from lots of pretty people. You know who does not? Scout. Go hug him.” Spy pushed him and got the feeling Sniper was somewhat humoring him, but he wasn't unwilling to hug Scout regardless.

Scout, while initially sputtering and cursing them both out, apparently could not escape Sniper’s hug. Demo, too drunk to actually figure out everything Scout had drunk but trying anyways, was quickly roped into the hug too. Before long the three seemed to lose all reluctance and were hanging off each other and snorting with the humor of the thoroughly smashed. Scout was suspiciously sniffly and latched onto Sniper’s side firmly. Spy made sure to get a picture of  _ that _ interesting image. He was sure the boy’s mother would love it and his brothers tease him mercilessly.

Drunk Sniper seemed to make it a quest to shower everyone on the team in affection, like he was trying to make up for what he ignored while sober. Some folks like Pyro and Demo took it rather gracefully but others less so. Medic in particular was hiding in Heavy’s arms like he was never coming out. Heavy kept chuckling and hugging all the mercs he’d gathered to him like collectible stuffed animals.

At the end of the night, sometime around four in the morning, half of RED was asleep where they sat or going that way. Sniper must have decided Soldier, passed out in his alcohol induced coma still, had missed out on the earlier shows of affection. He first tried dragging him to the nearest bed, in his RV, but Soldier was a mass of solid muscle. Sniper had no chance. 

Instead he ended up dragging Soldier over to lay on one of the lawnchairs left outside the RV instead, with all the infinite wisdom of a drunk person not realizing moving the lawnchair would have been far easier to move.

The last Spy saw, Sniper was half on the ground and half collapsed on Soldier’s chest and the two were snoring like a broken pair of chainsaws. He snapped another picture for blackmail’s sake.

All the other mercenaries had ended up sprawled together by Heavy, since the Russian was a very good pillow apparently, and the only one really conscious still was Pyro. They had disappeared for a minute but now came back to the bonfire with fluffy unicorn pajamas over their suit. In their arms was a multitude of pillows and fluffy blankets that they immediately threw over the piles of limbs.

Pyro stopped to offer a pillow and blanket to Spy. 

“No thank you, I will sleep in a bed.” Spy politely declined. 

Pyro made a shrugging motion and literally tossed themself onto the pile of men, snuggling down happily while they all cursed and moved around sleepily. 

Spy made sure to snap one more picture before checking on the fading bonfire and heading inside. He wasn’t near as drunk as the others were, but he’d still drank quite a lot of wine and was rather tipsy. He’d have to enjoy all his new blackmail material more thoroughly tomorrow when his headache faded.

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS A TON FOR READING and I hope y'all enjoyed, I definitely did rereading it. I made the document this fic is in on June of 2018?? Apparently????


End file.
